Millions of new voters register in swing states

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Friday, October 10, 2008

Stefanie Phillips, left, of San Bernardino, Calif., turned 18 in September. She came to register at San Francisco State University and decided to register to vote as well. She is among first-time voters registered by Gina Vallejo, right, of the student organization Social Workers Advocates for Vision and Empowerment (SWAVE) during lunch hour on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, Calif. less

Stefanie Phillips, left, of San Bernardino, Calif., turned 18 in September. She came to register at San Francisco State University and decided to register to vote as well. She is among first-time voters ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

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Stefanie Phillips, left, of San Bernardino, Calif., turned 18 in September. She came to register at San Francisco State University and decided to register to vote as well. She is among first-time voters registered by Gina Vallejo, right, of the student organization Social Workers Advocates for Vision and Empowerment (SWAVE) during lunch hour on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008 at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, Calif. less

Stefanie Phillips, left, of San Bernardino, Calif., turned 18 in September. She came to register at San Francisco State University and decided to register to vote as well. She is among first-time voters ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

Millions of new voters register in swing states

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Keen interest in the presidential election - and plenty of old-fashioned grassroots organizing - is translating into a surge in voter registration across the country, including large numbers of first-time voters.

Voter registration closed in two dozen states this week, and many are already reporting hundreds of thousands of new voters. The voter rolls grew by an estimated total of 4.7 million in nine battleground states, plus California, where the voter registration deadline is not until Oct. 20, according to preliminary figures obtained by The Chronicle from election officials.

Many of those voters were recruited by the political parties and the McCain and Obama campaigns, but several large nonpartisan election drives are taking credit for registering hundreds of thousands of people, including new citizens, young people and other first-time voters.

One new voter who registered just last weekend is 19-year-old Richmond resident Ryan Cowart, the catcher on the Contra Costa College baseball team. The team's coach, Marvin Webb, encouraged Cowart and his two dozen teammates not only to become voters but to spend their weekends knocking on doors in Richmond and registering voters.

"In order to have a voice, you have to vote," said Cowart, who is working toward an associate's degree in psychology. He said the issues he's most concerned about are education, the economy and the war in Iraq, where several of his friends are fighting.

Numbers higher than 2004

Thousands of voter registration cards arrive each day at the California secretary of state's office in Sacramento, reaching a high of 20,000 one day last week, according to spokeswoman Kate Folmar, and thousands more pour in daily to the registrars of voters in California's 58 counties. In September, the number of applications was almost 50 percent higher than at the same time before the last presidential election.

"We've seen some indications of very high voter interest in recent weeks," said Folmar.

Election officials in other states - from Pennsylvania to Colorado - echo that view.

"The level of interest is through the roof," said Rob Walsh, spokesman for Nevada's secretary of state. "Ultimately it doesn't matter until people actually go to the polls. But we have every expectation that it's going to be record numbers in every way."

Though the number of voters typically drops off between presidential elections, the tally of registered voters in the 10 states examined by The Chronicle is already at least 2.2 million higher than in 2004 and continues to grow.

The larger number of registered voters is expected to translate into higher voter turnout on Nov. 4, observers say. Mary Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, said she has spent recent weeks visiting with county election officials to ascertain whether they're prepared for voting day.

"All the election directors I've talked to are preparing for a huge turnout," she said.

The nonpartisan group Rock the Vote, which focuses on engaging 18- to 29-year-olds with voter drives on college campuses and at rock concerts, reports that 2.3 million people completed and downloaded a voter registration form from its Web site and received a follow-up phone call to ensure they mailed in the form.

"It's the largest youth voter registration campaign in history," said deputy director Chrissy Faessen. "In 2004 we had 1.2 million downloads, so we're doubling our numbers."

Focusing on new citizens, the We Are America Alliance has registered 500,000 voters, many at naturalization ceremonies in 14 states.

"Our focus was to emphasize the emerging voices of new citizens and the changing demographics in America," said the group's director, Holli Holliday.

'Fired up'

One new voter is Deepti Banerji, 48, of Los Gatos. Raised in India, Banerji said she never voted there because she considered Indian politicians too corrupt. She registered to vote on Sept. 17, the same day she was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

"This is the first time I've gotten fired up," said Banerji, who said she now spends her evenings watching the news with her husband and debating politics.

A media campaign dubbed "It's Time, Go Vote!" that is targeting naturalized Latino voters has inserted 1 million voter registration forms into Spanish language newspapers and is broadcasting public service announcements about how and where to vote on Spanish radio and television stations.

"The overarching goal here is to make electoral participation a part of the everyday life of Latinos in this country," said Efrain Escobedo, director of civic engagement for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, one of the groups running the effort.

Effort under scrutiny

One group working to register low-income and minority voters has come under scrutiny by election officials in several states who have found irregularities on some voter registration forms. The group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, works especially in areas that tend to vote Democratic, and says it has registered 1.3 million new voters. Republicans have seized on the allegations, accusing ACORN of fraud.

ACORN officials said Thursday that they themselves had identified some suspicious registration forms submitted by their paid workers and had fired workers and flagged the forms for election officials.

Several of this year's nonpartisan voter registration efforts focus on people who are young, poor or members of minority groups, groups that are often overlooked in the election push because they are not considered reliable voters. But research released last month by the James Irvine Foundation noted that such "unlikely" voters respond well if they are asked directly by another person to participate.

Melissa Michelson, associate professor of political science at Cal State East Bay and one of the study's authors, said she hoped the major political parties would take the findings to heart.

"The conventional wisdom is, 'Don't waste resources trying to get these voters out; save your resources for more likely voters,' " said Michelson. "Our research says ... it's not really that hard. The reason young people don't vote and people of color don't vote is because people don't reach out to them."

More voters

New registered voters in California and some battleground states (net increase in voters over the past year - dates vary by state):